Minutes of the Board meeting of April 8th, 2014

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20140408

= Minutes for Tuesday, April 8th, 2014, 16:00 UTC =

== Next Meeting ==
 * Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014, 16:00 UTC

== Attending ==
 * Andreas Nilsson (left early)
 * Marina Zhurakhinskaya
 * Tobias Mueller
 * Joanmarie Diggs
 * Ekaterina Gerasimova
 * Sriram Ramkrishna
 * Emmanuele Bassi
 * Rosanna Yuen

=== Regrets ===

=== Missing ===

== Board Meeting Agenda ==

 * Budget
  * We have a budget
   * 2013 has been updated
   * 2014 has been finalised
  * OPW project has grown a lot. This is great!
  * However, we are taking a  greater financial risk handling the
money between the organizations and the interns.
  * It also makes it a bigger work burden and we need to  discuss how
to handle this.
  * The risk is present if we start paying out the OPW interns before
we get funding for from sponsors.
  * We cannot entirely rely on getting paid in a timely manner from
every sponsor.
  * We currently expect 45 interns for the summer internship round.
   * For each we allocate USD 6250
  * Overhead of the OPW for the Foundation
   * USD ~6000 in bank fees
   * 3 to 4 months of Rosanna time
  * Given the growth of the OPW we may have to have somebody working
on it in place of Rosanna
   * It is digging into her time for the Foundation's needs
  * Plan of action
   * We need to delay payment until we have the sponsorship fees paid
   * Sponsors may allocate money in budgets that do not match OPW timelines
   * We should expect to have funds from most sponsors after May
   * The first payment of USD 500 per intern is scheduled for May 22nd
   * Other risk: we don't have a contract with the sponsors
    * Safety for the Foundation
   * Chances of getting paid before paying the interns
    * The timelines don't really match
    * We need to get the interns first
    * After we have the interns we can get sponsorship
    * The time between the interns are approved and the start of the
program is too small to get funds
   * We are using our funds to cover the OPW
   * We went into the red in our cash reserves
    * We are still holding GIMP, GStreamer, and Pitivi reserves
    * The reason we are in the red is because of OPW intern payments
without getting all invoices paid
    * Also most adboard member fees for 2014 have not been paid yet
    * We have various outstanding invoices
     * About USD 400,000
     * Many are old and not going to be recouped
     * OPW invoices should get paid
    * We have outstanding requests from Pitivi
     * We need to track all the payments in the PayPal account
   * Recommendations from the treasurer
    * All payments would touch the reserved amount for GIMP,
GStreamer, and Pitivi at this point in time
    * Freeze all event payments
     * Including the ones planned/in progress
     * Delayed by a few months
    * Do not send OPW payments out until OPW is in the black
     * We should invoice sponsors in April
     * For general sponsors, we should invoice them now
     * Set up invoicing for new companies now, delegate to the board
and OPW organisers
     * Invoice OPW sponsors and adboard fees
     * Try to cover the first OPW payment as soon as possible
   * The OPW process has been too heavy on Rosanna
    * Invoicing and keeping track of companies
    * It has grown so much and so quickly that Rosanna has had little
time to adapt to the workload
    * Can we split the responsibility?
     * Karen used to handle chasing the sponsors
     * Having a replacement for that role would help
   * By the next meeting we should have a better picture of the state
of our finances and of the invoices
   * We have outstanding expenses
    * Accessibility contract (Igalia; we expect an invoice soon)
    * Hackfest, GNOME.Asia travel sponsorship
    * Total: USD 60,000
    * We are going to prioritize paying these expenses as soon as
funding is available
   * We should send out the invoices for the advisory board fees
    * Estimated: USD 110,000
    * Need to refresh the list of adboard contacts
    * '''ACTION''': Andreas to update the list of adboard contacts on
the wiki and pass it on to Rosanna
   * Should we split up the accounts for different uses?
    * We still need to pay the account fees
    * We will need to revisit this in the near future
  * '''VOTE''': Freeze the whole budget of the foundation until
funding is available: -1 Marina, Joanie, Tobi, Emmanuele; +1 Kat, Sri
  * '''VOTE''': Freeze the budget of the foundation except running
expenses: +1 Kat, Joanie, Marina, Sri, Emmanuele; -1 Tobi
   * '''ACTION''': Kat to notify all involved parties for the freeze
of the Foundation budget
   * '''ACTION''': Kat, Sri to draft a notification to the foundation
about the current financial situation
  * '''VOTE''': Make first $500 payments for summer 2014 OPW interns
from aggregate paid summer 2014 invoices for whom money are coming
from sponsors that are not past due for prior round invoices: +1
Marina, Sri, Joanie, Tobi, Emmanuele; -1 Kat
   * This will avoid the situation of interns from some of the
organizations that budgeted money in the summer not being paid.
Aggregate means that the money coming in from all OPW sponsors will be
considered as part of a total OPW pot of money.
   * '''ACTION''': Marina to inform all sponsors of the result of the
vote on the first OPW round of payments and that their payments may be
used to pay interns from other organisations

 * Can we take a tax exempt donation from C&C for the west coast
hackfest (to go towards an evening event)?
  * Yes, we can
  * The Foundation is a 501(c)3 non profit
  * US company
  * USD 2500-5000 we send a thank you letter
  * Under USD 2500 we don't need to send any thanks
  * '''ACTION''': Sri to communicate to Rosanna and work on the
donation for the West Coast hackfest

 * Andrea asked if we can approach the advisory board for help with
upgrading our Bugzilla instance.
  * We need someone who is proficient at perl to work on it.
  * Andrea is not going to be able to work on this
  * We should ask our adboard if they can donate some employee time or funds
  * Possibly even a sponsored hackfest
  * '''ACTION''': Emmanuele to send an email to the adboard list about
possible funding for the Bugzilla upgrade

 * Updating certificates for gnome.org
  * OpenSSL bug
  * Andrea needs to update our certs
  * USD 124.5
  * Running expense
  * '''VOTE''': Authorise expense of USD 124.5 for updating the
gnome.org certificates after OpenSSL bug: unanimous.

 * Upcoming events
  * GUADEC 2014
   * Call for papers has gone out
   * Google has committed to sponsoring GUADEC and GNOME.Asia
   * Alexandre is expecting EUR 30,000 in corporate sponsorship
   * We should ask for government sponsorship
  * GNOME.Asia
   * Travel sponsorship request processed (thank you Emily and Max)
   * Emily coordinated well with FUDCON organisers to be sure to share
costs for shared attendees
  * DX Hackfest
  * GeoLocation Hackfest
   * May/June
   * We should be able to share sponsorship
   * Whether or not we can sponsor the hackfest depends on our budget
  * Docs hackfest @ OpenHelp
   * Usual budget is USD 5000
   * Same as above, we need to fix the Foundation's budget first

 * License grant (trademark) to use the GNOME Foot for worldofgnome.org
  * We were asked to license the use of a modified GNOME Foot logo for
worldofgnome.org
  * We should run this through Karen first
  * https://mail.gnome.org/archives/engagement-list/2014-March/msg00080.html

 * Budget requests:
  * Travel sponsorship for 2 attendees to go to 15th FISL (867 USD)
  * Travel sponsorship for LGM for two attendees.
  * Blocked, pending decision on the budget
  * Even if we vote in two weeks, it's going to be too late/too
expensive at the time
  * The opinion of the treasurer is that we cannot have more expenses
at this point
  * Kat will work on this as part of the notification of the financial situation

== Discussed on the mailing list ==

== Completed Actions ==

== Pending action items ==
 * Andreas to put together a GNOME supporter card for our donors
 * Emmanuele to send Zana and Tobi an update on FoG donors gifts
 * Emmanuele to send hackers up for "adoption" the list of donors that
want a postcard
 * Emmanuele to draft a date and time for the post-release meeting
 * Emmanuele to send a proposal to foundation-list about possible IRC meetings
 * Joanie to draft a proposal for the photography policy at GNOME
conferences to discuss on foundation-list
  * Joanie and Karen to meet and discuss about the photography policy
for GNOME events
 * Joanie to go over Michael Schumacher ideas on the Gimp funding
processes and merge them with her ideas on the wiki
 * Kat to create a private wiki page on the web services accounts
holders and passwords
  * Allan and Kat decided to go for a private git account instead for
security reasons
 * Kat to draft a proposal for a privacy policy for review during the
next meeting
 * Karen to write the Privacy policy for GNOME services
 * Karen and Tobi to continue pursuing the fund collection in Europe
 * Karen will review the agreement for collecting funds in Europe
 * Karen will look at gnome-software privacy issues from a legal standpoint
 * Sri to investigate better uses of adsense/adwords on the GNOME websites
 * Tobi to talk to Andrea to move the PayPal data extraction scripts
over to the GNOME infrastructure
 * Marina will follow up with Rosanna on OPW finances

-- 
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/